/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package org.apache.commons.beanutils;

/**
 * <p>
 * A <strong>DynaClass</strong> is a simulation of the functionality of <code>java.lang.Class</code> for classes implementing the
 * <code>DynaBean</code> interface. DynaBean instances that share the same DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any
 * associated data types, read-only states, and write-only states.
 * </p>
 * 
 * @author Craig McClanahan
 * @author Michael Smith
 * @author Paulo Gaspar
 * @version $Revision: 555824 $ $Date: 2007-07-13 01:27:15 +0100 (Fri, 13 Jul 2007) $
 */

public interface DynaClass {

    /**
     * Return the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the <code>getName()</code> method of <code>java.lang.Class</code), which allows the same
     * <code>DynaClass</code> implementation class to support different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
     * 
     * @return the name of the DynaClass
     */
    public String getName();

    /**
     * Return a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists; otherwise, return <code>null</code>.
     * 
     * @param name
     *            Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor is requested
     * @return The descriptor for the specified property
     * 
     * @exception IllegalArgumentException
     *                if no property name is specified
     */
    public DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);

    /**
     * <p>
     * Return an array of <code>ProperyDescriptors</code> for the properties currently defined in this DynaClass. If no properties are defined, a
     * zero-length array will be returned.
     * </p>
     * 
     * <p>
     * <strong>FIXME</strong> - Should we really be implementing <code>getBeanInfo()</code> instead, which returns property descriptors and a bunch of
     * other stuff?
     * </p>
     * 
     * @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
     */
    public DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();

    /**
     * Instantiate and return a new DynaBean instance, associated with this DynaClass.
     * 
     * @return A new <code>DynaBean</code> instance
     * 
     * @exception IllegalAccessException
     *                if the Class or the appropriate constructor is not accessible
     * @exception InstantiationException
     *                if this Class represents an abstract class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation fails for some other
     *                reason
     */
    public DynaBean newInstance() throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;

}
